HPV Vaccine for Men?

By Kate McHugh, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The highly publicized human papillomavirus (HPV) is not only a risk for women. Researchers have found the sexual partners of infected women are also at risk for oral HPV infection and subsequent oral cancers, making HPV an emerging epidemic among youth in the United States.

Doctors from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, found about 30 percent to 50 percent of patients suffering from cancers of the head and neck had never smoked or been heavy drinkers -- the most common risk factors of oral cancer development. With fewer Americans smoking tobacco in recent decades, doctors felt the rates of oral cancers should have decreased. They have attributed the stable rates of the incidence of these cancers to increased rates of HPV infection of the oral cavity.

"People think of HPV as a disease that is pretty much exclusively of the cervix, but it is also a risk for anal cancer, penal cancer, and throat cancer as well," Erich Sturgis, M.D., co-author of the study, told Ivanhoe.

Today, oral cancers account for 3 percent of all newly diagnosed cancers in the United States. These include cancers of the larynx, nasal passages/nose, oral cavity, pharynx and salivary glands. Men are three-times more likely to be diagnosed with these cancers than women, making HPV prevention methods important for both men and women.

The HPV vaccine Gardasil is currently available for women. Though the vaccine hasn't been proven affective for men, Dr. Sturgis said this is because of a lack of studies. He said he suspects the vaccine will be approved once studies are done.

"From our study, we hope that the industry works to get the vaccine to show effectiveness in males, and one way to do that would be to look at rates of infection in men in the throat and looking to see how well the vaccine does at preventing that," Dr. Sturgis said.

Though the prognosis for these cancers is excellent when caught early, more than half of them are identified in advanced stages, when the prognosis is far worse, making prevention critical to saving lives.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Erich Sturgis, M.D.; CANCER, 2007;110